PHARMA
FREIGHT
The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to see reduced
cargo capacity and less ergonomic transportation of
containers on freighters
PHARMA DRAMA
ALI checks in with Dominic Hyde, Vice President of Crēdo on
Demand at Peli BioThermal, to look at how the COVID-19 crisis is
impacting the global transportation of pharmaceuticals and the
repercussions for the air cargo sector.
How well is the industry coping
with the impact of COVID-19?
“The impact of the COVID-19
outbreak has been wide
reaching and continues to
evolve at a rapid rate,
prompting immediate changes
in the areas of pharmaceutical
transportation and air cargo.
“Early on, the industry had
to react to flight schedules
being cut, which meant rapidly
replanning shipments. The
initial pandemic response saw
pharmaceutical companies
chartering aircraft, with the
associated pressure of utilising
all the available space on board
to reduce the overall cost per
pallet shipped.
“As a result, we had
campaigns where there was the
requirement to get a lot more
rental equipment in place,
conditioned and ready to
release to be able to support
those charters. This required
increased co-ordination
between network stations,
pharmaceutical companies and
freight forwarders.
“Within weeks, the freight
forwarders got a handle on the
revised flight schedules and the
reduced availability in the
market. With scarce capacity,
pharmaceutical companies were
still looking to ship whatever
they could, whenever they
could, because they didn’t
know how the situation was
going to develop further.”
Has there been a decline in air
cargo capacity for
pharmaceutical transportation
since the start of the COVID-19
crisis?
“While there have been
downturns in air passenger
numbers in the past
surrounding SARS during 2003,
the level of this lockdown is
unprecedented.
“Moving forward there is
still uncertainty around how
flight schedules will develop.
The airlines are talking about it
taking years to get back to
where they were pre-pandemic,
and announcements of job cuts
are widespread, with British
Airways and Virgin Atlantic
cutting thousands of jobs.
“Airlines like Lufthansa,
Qantas and Delta are looking at
retiring certain aircraft early
and most of those aircraft will
be the older and larger variants
in the fleet.”
What are the repercussions of
these changes with the airlines
and aircraft?
“I think we will end up with
leaner fleets with smaller, more
fuel-efficient aircraft and a
material drop in the available
cargo capacity moving forward.
The cargo airlines will be
positioning themselves to
capitalise on this as much as
possible, as the cargo airlines
carry shipments on the main deck and lower decks, while
temperature controlled containers for pharma payloads are all
designed to go on the lower deck.
“Although we might see more cargo aircraft, if you use a
temperature controlled container on an upper deck, you
potentially lose all the headroom above it on the main deck, which
makes it less efficient.”
Is sea freight a viable alternative for pharmaceutical
transportation in the light of the changes happening in the air
cargo industry?
“There has been a trend in recent years for more pharmaceuticals
to transfer to sea freight, and while I expect that will continue, the
existing problems with sea freight are going to remain unchanged.
“When you look at the at the size of the 20 foot and 40 foot
reefers used on sea freight, this includes a lot of product to put into
one container, which potentially has a single point of failure mode,
leading to higher commercial risk.
“Sea freight is much slower and even pharmaceutical companies
that do use sea freight today still use air freight to top off that
capacity where faster response time is needed. It could be an
unexpected spike in demand and the only way to get that product
to the market quickly is air freight.
“There won’t be a day when everything goes by sea freight but
we might see a bit more going that way. However, the value
proposition of air freight for temperature-controlled pharma is
going to persist.”
32 June 2020 www.airlogisticsinternational.com
/www.airlogisticsinternational.com